Cold Email: The Movie Star Approach

I worked in sales for many years and here is what I learned about cold emails.

I’ve tried all sorts of approaches in search of that 'I love this' response.

I tried being direct and straight to the point. A lot of my customers are busy people, so they might have appreciated me getting down to business right away, but it probably left them kind of cold.

I tried being super professional. That resulted in some really dry and boring emails.

I even tried being warm and friendly. But I think that might have come across a bit cheesy and it didn’t get me the kind of results I was looking for.

The winning approach
After experimenting for a while, I finally landed on an approach that got me the results I was looking for.

Here are some of the responses I was able to generate:

What I learned is creativity wins.

Your leads see countless sales emails. If you’re going to stand out, you’ll have to inject a little creativity into yours. You don’t need to come up with a groundbreaking new approach or reinvent the wheel. Just have a little fun and give your customers something they’ll enjoy reading.

The Movie Star Approach
Here’s one of my most creative and highest performing sales emails. It’s the one that’s responsible for those great responses I shared above.

I call this the Movie Star Approach. Sellers and buyers keep having the same conversations over and over, and buyers complain that it starts to feel like they’re just running through a tired old script. And that’s what gave me my lightbulb moment: if my leads are bored to death of the regular script, I’ll give them a more exciting one!

So, I threw a little Hollywood flare into my sales email and wrote it out like a movie script. Here’s how it ran:

Subject: Skip the Intro Call

Hi Joe, I thought I could save us a bit of time by transcribing the usual bits of an intro sales call:

[Joe]: James, you’ve got 30 seconds. GO!

[James]: I help SaaS companies generate up to an extra fifty sales-ready leads per month.

[Joe, sarcastically]: Great… I get fifty of these offers per month, so why should I choose you!?

[James]: I’ll let my client answer that question. Here is what George S. Founder of SaaSmatics says:

“LinkedHub is Fantastic! They opened the doors to what is now our most valued clients. After six months of working with LinkedHub we maxed out our capacity for new customers.”

[Joe]: Whoop Di Do! I want to know HOW it’s possible to achieve so many sales-ready leads per month...

[James]: I completely understand and I'm happy to tell you, just click here to schedule a call.

Gratefully,
James

Why did that work so well?

Well, first, it was efficient. I spoke directly to their concerns and didn’t have to use up too much space to do it. The script format let me cut out all of the fluff and go straight to the point.

I also showed them that I understand something about them. My script showed them that I know how much they hate going through that tedious intro call and I gave them the opportunity to skip it. And isn’t that what every buyer wants from a salesperson: someone who understands their problems and can take steps to solve them?

And, last but not least, it was fun. While they were going through the drudgery of clicking through emails, dreaming of achieving Inbox Zero, something popped up that put a smile on their faces. How often does a sales email manage to do that?

Of course, before you can send a sales email you will need to have a list of prospects with email addresses included. My product, LinkedHub, makes building a prospect list with email easy.

Try It Out Yourself and Boost Engagement
If you’re not getting enough engagement from your email campaign, go ahead and try it out. Put a Hollywood spin on your next sales email and see what kind of responses you get.

Have any of you ever tried something like this? Let me know what kind of script you used and what kind of results you got.